Alastair Mayer’s T-Space Blog

Which is to say, a report on where I am with in-progress and upcoming books, not a report on anything I’ve read recently.

The first draft of The Pavonis Insurgence, next in the Carson & Roberts series, is finished, but still requires revision (which will probably add ten thousand words or so) and final editing. So, maybe by Memorial Day? I spun up a lot of different plot threads in The Eridani Convergence and The Reticuli Deception before that, and I’m starting to tie them together.

When I came up with the whole T-Space series, I envisioned a twelve book plot arc, loosely based on a four-act structure. The Alpha Centauri series was act one. Kakuloa was supposed to bridge act one and act two, the Carson & Roberts series. Those of you mathematically inclined (if you’re also familiar with the four act structure) will be starting to recognize a problem about here. Pavonis will be the fourth of the Carson & Roberts books, and I’ve already suggested that Kakuloa itself may end up as four books (the first, A Rising Tide, came out in January, the next, The Downhill Slide is also in progress, about one-third done, with some work started on the third, Crash and Burn). And I’m only (with Pavonis) nearing the end-of-act-two plot twist. So, maybe a twenty (-plus?) volume series? We’ll see.

In my defense, these volumes are not the multi-hundred-thousand word volumes of a Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones) or Wheel of Time. (Note, I’m not comparing myself to Martin or Jordan as an author, just comparing word counts.) I grew up on much shorter novels, and I think my readers would prefer to see me publish more frequently than once every few years. So there’s that. Anyway, I’d like to have the next Kakuloa book out by Westercon/NASFiC, which is the July 4th extended weekend.

On the other hand, I don’t want to get myself pigeonholed as just the author of the T-Space series. I have a few other projects that I’d like to work on.

Two of these are set within our own solar system, and are old projects I’m looking at taking off the back burner. One is my “Great Martian Novel” (every hard SF author should write one), centered around a couple of major construction projects on Mars. The other is my “Apollo 18” book, which was about half-written when that [expletive deleted] movie of the same name came out. I think it has been long enough now, and the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 is coming up. Working title is now Apollo 18: Project Jeannie. This is set between Apollo 17 and Skylab, and has nothing in common with the movie except the mission number and the Soviet lunar lander. (No doubt we were both inspired by the revelation that there was a Soviet lunar lander, although it never flew and was kept secret by the USSR to pretend there never was a Moon race.) No promises on these. I have mentioned them in passing before and will post more when there’s something more definite.

Another one is set in T-Space, but will be YA (young adult). I’ve alluded to the fact that Jackie Roberts was born on a starship during the five-year Eta Carinae mission. I want to tell a story of her growing up ten years after that, when her parents take her on another multi-year mission. I’d like to have that one ready for Christmas, but that depends on my writing schedule and priorities.

Somewhere in there I’d also like to do a sci-fi/fantasy crossover, maybe an expansion of my short “The Gremlin Gambit” (but I have some other ideas, too).

Too much to write and too little time. What would you like to see?

Speaking of interviews (see below), back when The Chara Talisman was about to be released, I was interviewed for a podcast while at MileHiCon. I came across a link to that recently. Oddly, the page is tagged for Connie Willis. She usually attends MHC, and she may have been a guest of honor that year. (Ironically, I interviewed Connie myself about twenty years earlier, for a public access TV show our local National Space Society (L5) chapter was doing.)

Anyway, here’s the link to the interview. There are two MP3s on that page for some reason; they’re both the same interview. I intend to make that available from this website in case that link goes away. I’ll post the link when I do.

The interviewer starts off relating how he was reading my “Poetic Justice” and got so distracted he missed his train. That story originally appeared in Space Horrors and is reprinted in my Alastair Mayer: A Sampler if you’d like to read it yourself. (And if you have read it, that page could use a few reviews. [grin])

Meanwhile, work on the next two Kakuloa books and the sequel to The Eridani Convergence continues. Look for releases beginning in May.

So earlier this month I was interviewed by Jon Caldera for his TV show “Devil’s Advocate”. The clip is up on YouTube. We chatted about science fiction in general and about indie publishing, but he did plug my books. Caldera is a science fiction fan from way back, I had fun. It’s only twelve minutes, so not very in-depth. Maybe it will lead to more.

Anyway, check it out. (I’m the one in the blue shirt and glasses. 😉 )

Finally. It still needs a few finishing touches based on early-reader feedback, and the usual publishing steps like formatting for print and ebook, cover blurbs, and so on, but the story is done. A Rising Tide comes in at about 85,000 words, so my longest yet.

The book starts out following the Victoria to the planet Kakuloa (in the Alpha Centauri system) immediately after the events of The Return, then skips forward a few years to the settlement of Kakuloa, and the rise of the squidberry* industry…and the problems they’re having with tree squids. Cephalopod expert Dr. Ellie Greystone is called in, but she has problems of her own on Earth, and not everyone on Kakuloa is happy with what she’s discovering about the squids.

Squidberries aren’t the only industry on Kakuloa, of course. It’s becoming a jumping-off spot for further interstellar exploration; a resort developer likes the beaches, and especially likes some loopholes in the law governing the planet; and William Blake finds his role expanding from mission commander to de facto planetary administrator, with all the associated headaches.

There will be more books in the Kakuloa series, bridging the gap between Alpha Centauri and the The Chara Talisman, but without the cliff-hangers that the Alpha Centauri series had. Jason Curtis will show up in there somewhere.

A Rising Tide should be available around Christmas. That’s the cover above on the right. Now, I have a couple of others to finish….

*(Squidberries are the source of an anti-aging drug.)

UPDATE: Kakuloa: A Rising Tide is now available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions. It is also available on Kindle Unlimited.

I keep promising that the next book is coming Real Soon Now, and it is, so I though folks might be interested in just how it is progressing. I keep track of my writing time and word count in a spreadsheet (this is valuable, especially if you’re doing something on a deadline like NaNoWriMo). Below is a chart from the current spreadsheet.

The dates along the bottom should be self-explanatory. The horizontal lines mark increments of 10,000 words. The dark blue line, which just crossed the 70,000 mark, is for Kakuloa: A Rising Tide. The orange line is for The Pavonis Insurgence.

You’ll notice a sharp dip in the blue line just before 09/08/18. That’s when I realized that a couple of chapters I’d already written more properly belonged in a later book, so I took them out. That’s the yellow line (incomplete because I’m not tracking it at the moment), which will be Kakuloa: A Downward Slide when it’s done.

The wavery bits in the September/October time-frame are where I’m doing some editing and revising, and October looks relatively flat because I’ve been removing outline notes to myself (which I embed in the text as I go along) and replacing them with actual story. Also incorporating edit fixes from my alpha readers. (Also dealing with some non-writing crap, like replacing my car.) Pavonis is mostly horizontal recently because I’m focused on finishing Kakuloa; it will climb rapidly once that one is done.

My pace this year has been slower than last, partly because of life interfering, but also because I’m having to do more extensive research and world-building (and keeping track of it all) than for the first Alpha Centauri trilogy. Next year should go faster.

So. I’m not forecasting a release date yet (still aiming for this year though), but my editor/beta readers should have it by Thanksgiving. For which I, for one, will be truly thankful.

P.S. There’s another chapter I pulled out because it was more of a sidebar that just didn’t fit. It’s relevant background, though, so I’ll probably make it available to my newsletter subscribers. You can go here to sign up. No spam, I promise.

It’s that time again. MileHiCon, the Denver regional science-fiction convention, at the Denver Tech Center Hyatt-Regency hotel is celebrating its 50th the weekend of October 19-21. I will be there for the weekend, including panels Friday afternoon and Saturday evening and the mass autographing Saturday afternoon. I’ll also have books at one of the author tables in the lobby. Find me and say “hi”.

The Colorado Christmas Gift Show will have a booth for the Colorado Authors’ League (CAL), which will have my books available. (I’ll also be at the booth for a couple of shifts, I don’t know exactly when.) The Show is the weekend of November 2-4 at the Denver Merchandise Mart.

I’m into the final editing stage for the Kakuloa book. This will be the first of three: Kakuloa: A Rising Tide, Kakuloa: The Downhill Slide and Kakuloa: Revivified (that last title may change). These span the gap between the Alpha Centauri series (you can think of them as books 4, 5 and 6 in that series, although the original characters make only minor appearances, if any) and The Chara Talisman. I can’t promise it for either of the above events, but I’m hoping. Definitely by December. And the next Carson & Roberts is in progress too.

Things have been a little crazy over the summer. Too much going on and not enough progress on the next books. As mentioned earlier, I had The Eridani Convergence re-edited and republished (see the earlier post below). I am planning on doing second editions of all the previous novels, with some updates and additional material, but that will wait until at least Kakuloa is out.

I pulled my old collection Starfire & Snowball (with the crummy cover) and issued a new collection (with many, but not all, of the same stories), Alastair Mayer – A Sampler. (Cover image at right. Much better than S&S.) This is currently paperback only, but there will be an e-book version shortly. This will be available on most e-book outlets, currently the novels are Amazon only (it’s a restriction imposed by Amazon to be available through Kindle Unlimited). Stay tuned (or sign up for my newsletter) for news about getting a free copy of this.

Conventions I’ve already done StarFest and Westercon this year, next up (August 24-26) is Bubonicon in Albuquerque, NM. Alas, I missed WorldCon and I think I’m going to have to give DragonCon a miss too because of work schedule. MileHiCon 50 (October) for sure, and I’m debating World Fantasy Con in November.

Works In Progress Kakuloa is coming along slowly but steadily. It’s a sequel to the Alpha Centauri trilogy, but not exactly the fourth volume. It starts just after The Return leaves off, but then skips forwards a few years to when the planet is being settled by squidberry farmers and Kakuloa City is being built. A few characters from the trilogy make appearances, but it is mostly new characters and new plots, and the book covers a span of a few decades (Jason Curtis puts in an appearance). The next Carson & Roberts book, The Pavonis Insurgence, is about one-third done. This one feels like the middle of a chess game; it’s a matter of getting all the pieces in the right places before the end game, which will be the next series of books, where we’ll see a lot more of various spacegoing aliens.

As background to all this, I’ve been worldbuilding. Some of that shows up on the T-Space Wiki, although I try to avoid too many spoilers for work that isn’t published yet. Check it out, and if you want edit access, just ask. I’d love to have some help with it.

Just a quick note that I’m pulling The Eridani Convergence from distribution temporarily. The current version has a few minor errors (mostly badly placed commas or words accidentally omitted in edit), more than I’m comfortable with.

I’ve had it all re-proofed by another editor and the corrected version should be available in about a week. (No plot elements were harmed in the making of this edit.)

[UPDATE: 6/30/18 – Both the Kindle and print versions are now available again. ]

On a related note, I’m at about the one-third point in the sequel, The Pavonis Insurgence (or possibly, The Pavonis Surprise. I’m waffling on the title.) Kakuloa, the sequel in the Alpha Centauri series, is further on. Release is planned before DragonCon (before WorldCon if I can manage it), so this summer for sure.

I’ve been invited to give a science-track presentation at this year’s Westercon (Denver, July 4-8). They asked for a topic, so I proposed The Science of T-Space (blurbed as “Terraforming and warp drives and fusion power, oh my! What’s the real science behind Alastair Mayer’s T-Space series?”), which they accepted. This gives me a chance to talk about some of the stuff I didn’t want to just info-dump in the stories (grin).

The current schedule has me on at 4pm on Thursday, July 5. I realize that won’t work out (either time or location) for some of you, but if you can make it, I’d love to see you there. My plan is to cover some of the key topics and then throw it open to questions. Speaking of, if you have questions about the background of T-Space, go ahead and post them below. I’ll answer them here, and also see about working it into my presentation.

If it works out, I’ll pitch the idea to MileHiCon for October (it may be a tough sell; this year is MHC’s 50th anniversary, and there will be a lot of guests, including many previous guests of honor.)

I’ll be around at Westercon for the whole very long weekend. Currently I’m not planning on having a sales table. StarFest worked out alright but I’d rather attend the events. If you’re going to be there, check out the schedule, I may be on other panels.

I’m posting the (slightly abridged) contents of my March 1 newsletter below, for those of you who aren’t on the mailing list and might be curious about it. There’s no specific schedule, but it comes out roughly every month or two depending on what (if any) news there is. Nobody likes spam.

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As mentioned last time, I’m slowing the writing pace a bit this year (after four releases from October 2016 to December 2017). I’m doing more world-building (and expanding the wiki), as well as getting some short stories out. The books are coming too, though. I’m making significant progress on Alpha Centauri: Kakuloa (the fourth in the trilogy, grin) and the fourth Carson & Roberts book (working title is either The Pavonis Surprise or The Pavonis Insurgence). A third release this year is a possibility.

Kakuloa will likely have some scenes that tie back to incidents in the Jason Curtis story “Renee”, but from a different viewpoint. (The scenes are drafted, not 100% sure if they’ll make the final cut yet.) I’m aiming to have this out before Westercon, which brings me to my next topic….

Conventions.
My plans for this year definitely include StarFest (Denver, April 20-22), Westercon 71 (Denver, July 4-8), and MileHiCon 50 (Denver, Oct 19-21). You may notice a geographic theme there. I also plan to get to at least one of WorldCon 76 (San Jose, Aug 16-20) and/or DragonCon (Atlanta, Aug 30-Sep 3. This one is huge, more like Comicon.) If you make it to any of these, find me and say hi. If there’s a regional convention you like to attend that I haven’t mentioned, let me know. I can’t make any promises here, but I’m always open to visiting new places.

Pictures

(thanks, SpaceX)

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